SQL is a declarative language that is hard to integrate into procedural, object-oriented, functional or any other type of programming languages. jOOQ's philosophy is to give SQL the credit it deserves and integrate SQL itself as an "internal domain specific language" directly into Java.

With this philosophy in mind, SQL building is the main feature of jOOQ. All other features (such as SQL execution and code generation) are mere convenience built on top of jOOQ's SQL building capabilities.

This section explains all about the various syntax elements involved with jOOQ's SQL building capabilities. For a complete overview of all syntax elements, please refer to the manual's sections about SQL to DSL mapping rules as well as jOOQ's BNF notation